Beatbox My Heartbeat
by Reillusioned
Summary: Music has always been the soul of sentinent species. I find that in a world run by an international protection society turned hostile dictatorship, it's the only thing that keeps me sane.


Wow.

A few years ago, there was a fic on here called SA3: Kitsune. It was unoriginal, poorly named, badly written, and the chapters were at most 500 words.

It was mine.

I kept it up afterwards, even when I hated it, simply because it was the only thing I had ever finished. It had 60 reviews and was a piece of utter shit. But I have the attention span of a gnat, and anything I finish is something to be proud of. It was taken down for something stupid, like having 'ass' in the summary, and I vented and ranted but never got around to revamping it.

Well, here you are.

It's a lot different now. It's a bit darker, has somewhat of a plot, OCs galore (but hey, that's the status quo for me) and it's a HELL of a lot better written.

Songfics, in their true versions, are banned on But pretty much everything I write is a songfic, because I live and breathe music. I get ideas from it, let it set my mood, and most importantly, write to it. Every chapter in this fic is written to a song, and the name is an album from one of my favourite bands. Kudos if you know who.

So, I warn you. The plot is ludicrous, it's overrun with original characters, it has absolutely nothing to do with any of the games, but I think it's worth reading, if only to see the difference three years can make.

Those were different times. was fresh and new to me. I hadn't even heard of the horrors of MarySues. My writing… Well, the nice way to say it is that my writing now looks like Shakespeare compared to that.

So here it is. Shoutout to the old gang. Dragon Master Naya, PanFan, Peanut the Hedgehog, and that one person who kept saying that they wanted a Jax plushie. This one's for you guys.

(-)

The first thing I remember is warmth.

Of course, I can remember things before that. But only in a dull, foggy way. When I think too hard about it, my head starts to hurt. The thoughts slip away from me the moment I think I have them, like trying to catch ripples on a pond. So I've given up. The past isn't relevant anyway, it's even more of a dream than the present.

So, the first thing I remember is warmth.

Green liquid, bubbling in a soft sort of way, and gently warm. Something clamped onto my face, indirectly delivering air to my lungs. Suspension, floating in that safe liquid. I never moved, glimpsed my twisted reflection in the green-tinted glass before me through half-lidded eyes, concave and warped. I have no idea how long I lived like this. Alive. Suspended, warm and content. Like a dream. But content only because I knew not that I wasn't truly alive.

Then there was pain.

Something in my head, sharp and cold, digging into my skull. An explosion of pain inside my skull. I tried to panic, something in me knew I should. But there must have been drugs in the fluid, or air. There was an electric buzzing in my head, and if I had been thinking before that it would have been impossible by that point. But I hadn't been thinking, just existing. The buzzing grew, higher pitched, and my brain felt as if it was heating up. Tiny electrical shocks, snapping noises, as something, _something_ was entering my mind forcibly.

Then I knew.

I didn't just know, I _Knew._

I knew everything.

Every scrap of information, every insignificant little bit of data that humankind had inadvertently gathered over eons, had been collected and unloaded into my brain. The world's knowledge flashed before me. It may have felt like seconds and taken hours, or it may have felt like hours and taken seconds. Even I don't know. But at last the cold, hard metal retreated and left me alone with all of the information… Ever.

Ever.

I suddenly knew what that meant.

I was thinking.

But I didn't want to.

The knowledge was overwhelming. For the first time I knew of, I consciously felt the need for sleep.

_Sleep: Noun. Condition of the body in which living organisms engage for several hours every daily cycle in which the mind is suspended and recovers from the stress of that day._

Especially if it meant ridding myself of _that._

I hoped, in a vague sort of way, that it wouldn't keep happening.

(-)

No such luck.

"How is he?"

"Not bad. They transferred the data a few weeks ago, according to the form on the desk."

"Well, break him out, quick. Before the alarms go off again."

I lazily opened my eyes to see three shapes, made blurry by the glass in front of me and all tinted strongly green. My eyes widened slightly just in time to see one of them banging loudly on said glass with some blunt object, creating small cracks. My soothing green liquid was escaping in spurts through the cracks, but I failed to notice that I would soon follow. I regarded the entire procedure with a passive indifference, my only thought being that I would eventually run out of liquid.

The cracks widened swiftly, soon the entire front crashed forward, taking me and a large percentage of the liquid with it. The mask giving me air was torn from my face as I fell forward, carried by fluid and gravity. I lay crumpled on shards of glass, shivering and gasping for air. True air. I lay unclothed, instinctively curled up to try and conserve heat. I was freezing, soaked, and the cold air burned my throat and lungs. But some strange part of me was screaming with gratitude for this horrible oxygen. It was clear, not warmed, not drugged to soothe me and keep me passive. I saw the last few weeks of my life with sudden and startling clarity.

But I was still confused.

One of the formerly blurry thing leant over me, crouched down. It was grey, and in a moment I realized that it was female. She had stolen a lab coat from somewhere, it was the only thing she was wearing. Pale grey fur, with white undertones and an abrupt change in tone from grey to green atop her head. Her hair was unbound and came to her shoulders, and eyes of the same emerald shade blinking worriedly at me. She swayed slightly, still crouched, and I could tell that she was still recovering from an ordeal similar to mine.

"Are you okay?" She said, her voice shaking as slightly as her knees, but shaking nonetheless.

I convulsed and repressed it. "What are you?" I asked, my vision swimming in and out of focus.

Another creature appeared behind her, this one blue, but also bearing a pilfered lab coat. The brightness of the fur hurt my eyes; it was a blue so pale he almost blended into the white of the walls. Spines protruding from the back of his head seemed to be the extensions of a darker blue 'V' shape that started in the middle of his forehead. He was the one who answered my question.

"She's a fox of some sort. I'm a hedgehog and she-" He pointed to a creature on the other side of me that I hadn't noticed before. She was a pale, grey-turquoise, with hair only a shade or two darker. Her eyes were almost closed as she regarded me and the room that held us, and she seemed to be the only one wearing unremarkable grey clothes. "- We're pretty sure is some sort of weasel."

"Wh… "What am I?" My voice was shaking harder now, the cold was seeping into my skin.

"I think you're a fox too, I don't think you could be much else." The hedgehog was fetching me a labcoat of my own as he answered me.

I tired to sit up as I pulled the fabric around my body. "No, I… What _am_ I?"

The weasel waved a small clipboard produced from a desk behind her. "It says here that Project Bide was meant to be a living database, self-updating through everyday learning, and a fully-functioning creature of society. Then it goes on to list the tactical and practical uses of such a creature. Would that be you?"

I shivered, at least partially from the cold, and nodded. It was the only thing that made sense now. From the information in my head, I knew that the brain's knowledge, reactions and most importantly, memories were nothing more than tiny electric pulses. Another piece of knowledge made itself known, telling me that computers used a system of pulses called binary, and that it wasn't all that different to alter a mind from a hard drive.

The more I thought, the more I knew. Something in me bitterly thought 'Well, at least that works.' as I tried to stumble to my feet.

But had I been born from that tube, and simply written in like a blank book? Or had I lived a life before, and been adapted?

Neither possibility appealed to me.

"Why did you…" For some reason, I didn't want to use the word rescue. "Let me out?"

The grey fox looked up at me, standing I was taller than her. 'Because we're like you."

The hedgehog spoke again. "We've all been experimented on. We don't know what we are, only what the lab reports claim as 'positive data'. We want to get out." I sensed the same spark in all of them as I had discovered in myself. The one that cried for freedom and real life, not the cold sterile walls of a laboratory.

"Where are you going?"

The fox in front of me breathed heavily. "We don't know. Out."

"I have the reports on us, you can read them once we're out of here. You can free some others, but I'm gone." The weasel looked directly at me. "Here are your reports. I'll let a few others go on my way out, but that's what I am; Out."

The hedgehog and fox nodded and took the reports, the weasel stepped quickly out of the room, returned for but a moment. "You should think about doing that same, they're bound to notice that you're missing any minute now."

As if on cue, a piercing two-tone alarm went off. I clutched my ears, unused to any noise but the soft swish of fluid past my fur. The blue hedgehog nodded at me. "Come on."

All of us straightening in unison, the two others finally remembered that I had no idea who they were. "I'm Project Jax." Spoke the hedgehog. The female fox gave me a tired smile, steadying me by holding my shoulder. "I'm Project Seraphim."

We made quickly for the door, not knowing where it led, but hoping it would eventually lead to answers and knowing that even if it didn't it was better than here.

(-)

About six months after the Black Doom incident, GUN revealed something that they had been planning for years; a military plan for world domination. They pulled a coup and killed the president on Station Square, and herded the entire world's population into a few cities. The segregated the humans and the furries, placing the furries in poorly guarded ghettos from which many soon escaped into the wild. This totalitarian rule was met with resistance, which was in turn met with the army of genetic soldiers that GUN had been growing. The experiments continued even after the takeover. Almost a year afterwards, a large group of these experiments escaped and scattered, supposedly never to see each other again. They planned to live a normal life. They ended up banding with former heroes in exile, starting a revolution and bringing down a dictatorship.

This is their story.

(-)

There you have it. First chapter. (laughs) Yeah, I know the GUN part is cheesy, but hey, it's supposed to be. Now review if you want a second chapter.


End file.
